People who set themselves on fire for Hungarians
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Committing somebody to the flames was a common sentence in several historic eras. But it turned into something more. Setting oneself on fire became a form of resistance, protesting against an idea. It started with a Czech university student whose act influenced Hungarian students as well as others. Index.hu presented the story of two young boys.
Sándor Bauer
On the 20th of January, 1969 a 17-year-old boy, Sándor Bauer poured gasoline all over his body and set himself on fire in the garden of the National Museum. He started running while in flames, but collapsed after a few metres. He was still conscious in the hospital but 85% of his body got burnt. He died three days later, but before that he was taken into custody by the authorities with a justification that “he said outrageous things about the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party and the Hungarian Revolutionary Worker-Country Government in the company of his friends.”
He didn’t act in the heat of the moment. He applied to the forestry vocational school in Szeged, but, despite his good results they chose the son of a party secretary instead of him. He decided to become a car mechanic with the encouragement of his father who worked in a party garage. The house he lived in was fired to ground by the Soviet occupation troops in 1956. These things affected his view of the world and at an older age he held club meetings in his cellar where he constantly enounced his oppositionist views.
Jan Palach, a Czech university student, had a big effect on him with his act of resistance by setting himself on fire on the main square of the capital of Czechoslovakia, thus expressing his protest against the Soviet entry in 1968.
According to index.hu, Bauer even left a goodbye-letter behind in which he declared himself a Leninist but made it clear that he protested against the Soviet occupation.
“I greet everyone in the class. Every teacher and every student. I’m sending you my message, that, without an idea one does exist, but does not live. Fight, as I recommended to. I’m setting myself on fire just like the Czechoslovakian student did on the 19th. Thus protesting against the Soviet occupation. Don’t hate the Russian nation, it is not the Russian proletariat that enslaves us. It is the Russian national Bolshevism. This is not what Comrade Lenin forethought.
With communist regards, Sándor
P.s.: Give my greetings to Tankos and Udvarias Pajti! Watch out, the Russian leaders and the capitalists of the USA divided the world! Don’t expect any good from the USA.
For my parents: Dear Mom and Dad! Forgive me if I hadn’t been a good son to you. I want to live, but now, the Nation and the proletariat need my burnt body. I send kisses to my dear granny and beloved uncles, nephews and nieces.”